Name: Stock markets react to news of potential U.S. investments in Venezuela
Uploaded: 2026-01-06T16:00:47.442Z
Duration: 3 min 36 s
Description: Stock markets rallied as more news emerges about potential investment opportunities in Venezuela. Kristin Myers, the ETF editor-in-chief for Asset TV, joins with more.

Stock markets rallied as more news emerges about potential investment opportunities in Venezuela. Kristin Myers, the ETF editor-in-chief for Asset TV, joins with more.

New York

U.S. stock markets opened with little change following a previous rally driven by reports of Nicolas Maduro's capture and President Trump's comments on potential investments in Venezuela's oil industry. Market analysts noted that while American companies have the capacity to extract and refine Venezuelan oil, significant political, economic, and security challenges remain.

Experts highlighted that U.S. oil companies would need to be convinced to re-enter Venezuela, given past asset seizures and ongoing instability. The potential investment, estimated at over $100 billion, could involve taxpayer funds and faces hurdles due to the country's infrastructure deficits and links to criminal organizations.

Stock markets react to news of potential U.S. investments in Venezuela

And this is what the opening bell on Wall Street sounded like this morning. It took place just a few moments ago. Tortoise Capital took to the podium to celebrate its launch of an AI infrastructure ETF, whatever that is. The Dow, let's take a look at it. It's on the floor here. Can you read that? It's flat this morning. Let's see, it's only up about 35 points, but it's just getting going. Three minutes of trading at this moment. All three major markets rallied yesterday on news that Nicolas Maduro had been captured by the U.S. and Venezuela, coupled with President Trump's statements about the need for investments in its oil industry. And we've got Kristen Meyers here to discuss that and more. She is the ETF editor in chief of AssetTV. So you know what all these letters mean. And she joins us now. We can talk about that AI infrastructure ETF if you want. Let's start with the oil. Yes. Because the president said that later this, or it's, we know that later this week, oil executives of U.S. companies will meet with the president later this week to discuss what to be done in Venezuela. How difficult do you imagine that meeting to go and who is exactly convincing whom to do something? Okay, well, the oil executives are going to have to be convinced. First and foremost, U.S. oil companies already existed and operated inside of Venezuela. Let's just start there. It was about 20 years ago. And then Venezuela came and took all of their assets. I mean, ConocoPhillips still has billions of dollars that they're trying to recoup in losses from just 20 years ago. So they now have to be convinced to go back into a country where, again, the current acting president is a Maduro loyalist, where you have a lot of government officials that still have links to terror organizations and drug cartels. This is a country that is not yet built up with its own infrastructure. And now you're asking U.S. companies, perhaps U.S. taxpayer investment into the nation to bring their oil industry essentially back online. And that's going to take billions of dollars, over $100 billion. From the government, from these companies, the American people. These are taxpayer funds, so we'd need to support this as well. So are these the big concerns over what comes next? President Trump said oil 20 times in his weekend press conference while previously saying it's not about the oil, it's about drugs. Is this the big challenge with figuring out how to work with the current regime and get anything done? Yeah, I would actually say that the oil bit is actually probably the easiest bit, right? We already have American companies that can take the Venezuelan oil, that can refine it, that can ship it out. They are sitting on the world's largest oil reserves and their issue has really been getting the oil out of the ground, refined, shipped out and delivered. That's not really the biggest issue. The biggest issue, again, are the political problems that the country has, the economic problems that the nation has, and again, the drug problems that the nation has. I mean, I've spoken to people before that frankly called Venezuela a mafia state or even a narco state. And that's a really difficult situation to really operate in and again, to get U.S. taxpayer and obviously American oil companies to try to operate inside of. Tough to do business. Last couple seconds, how can AI be used in an ETF? Can you explain? What does that mean? It means that you're going to be investing in artificial intelligence or all of the companies that essentially make up artificial intelligence. So it's a quick and easy way to buy into the sector. It's a bit too easy. I need to understand it. I don't know about Tortoise Capital's ETF, but... This is not an endorsement. Yeah. Okay. Kristen Meyers, great to have you here.

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